Operation: Hacky Sack!
by Nyala Necheyev
Summary: It is a boring, boring day at Stalag 13, and soon the men are assailed by desperation. They can hoodwink the Germans and combat the forces of evil, but can they defeat the ever-depressing cruelty of total, absolute ennui? PBA BRONZE WINNER
1. Chapter 1

**Operation Hacky Sack**

**Part One**

"Boring" was the name of the game. The POWs had played every game in the book, and still they were bored stiff. Commandant Colonel Klink hadn't given them any jobs to do, and the weather, while not too hot or cold for energized running and yelling, still displayed a cloudy gray sky overhead. The temperature was nice – only 62 degrees, or, as Newkirk and LeBeau insisted, 16 degrees. Colonel Hogan, the ranking POW officer, just called it chilly, and that seemed to work just fine for everybody.

"'Ey, Carter," said Newkirk to the young blonde across the bench from him. Bending forward, the cockney pilot offered a deck of magicians' cards. "Pick one."

The American gave the corporal a dubious look and slipped the top one off the deck. Newkirk smirked deviously and set to reshuffling the cards, meanwhile saying, "Now, don't tell me –"

"Five of diamonds."

"Andrew!" the dark-haired man complained, "I was just about t' tell ya not t' tell me!"

Sergeant Andrew Carter shrugged apologetically. He was a good-natured kid, and typically didn't ruin people's fun on purpose. However, accidents did happen – a lot. "I'm sorry, Newkirk," he said in that plaintive tone of his, "It's just that… well…"

"You're bored," Newkirk accused, propping one of his feet on the bench and sulking. Louis LeBeau gave the two a sympathetic glance.

"Let's face it, mon ami," said the Frenchman, "He's not the only one."

"We've played every game in the book," declared Sergeant Kinchloe with a voice that sounded almost as dark as his face, which had a handsome, Negro-like quality about it, "And out of it. We've done everything we can think of, Newkirk, and don't tell me you're not still bored too."

"Betcha the colonel could think of something," Carter said hopefully, "If anyone can, he's it."

"He has," said Louis, "He's in Klink's office trying to arrange a little excitement for us."

"Like what?" asked Kinchloe.

LeBeau gave a skeptical glance toward the building across the yard. "A vacation to Paris."

Peter Newkirk snorted in condensation. "Mental, 'e is. Shouldn't 'ave asked 'im, Kinch."

"Sorry," Kinchloe replied sincerely, just as dubious as the rest of them, save, perhaps, for Newkirk. Newkirk was always proclaiming the colonel's insanity and maybe he was right, but nevertheless, not one of Hogan's plans had completely gone off amiss – well, some of them, maybe, but not very often.

"Hey, Kinch, wanna play checkers?" Carter asked, by way of trying to please everybody. Sergeant Carter had the personality of a puppy dog – he was always trying to please everybody and make the Germans loose at the same time. It wasn't an easy feat, but somehow, he managed.

Kinch shook his head. "No thanks," he declined politely, "I already know who'd win."

"Aw, come on!" Carter pleaded, as Newkirk and LeBeau exchanged glances and rolled their eyes, "I'll go easy on you! You can even play the white pieces – they move first. Anyway, winning's not that important. It's just something to have fun with –"

"Carter," Kinch interrupted him, "We played checkers a few hours ago, remember? And you offered me the same deal that time, too, and I took it. And guess who won?"

Andrew balked. "Aw, you're not still sore about that, are you? Come on, Kinch, seriously, I'll let you win this –"

"Forget it, Carter," Kinchloe told him firmly, "Truth is, I'd really like to do something a little more engaging this time."

"Well… how about soccer?"

"Football," Newkirk corrected, "And no way. We played that half an hour ago until Private Buschwacher shot the ball."

"Oh, yeah…" Carter remembered, his face full of innocent incredulity as he added, "Imagine that – shooting a soccer ball - !"

"Football –"

"Yeah, whatever," Carter replied, brushing the corporal to one side as he sat on the bench, thinking heavily. "What we need is a game with a target that's too small to see from a guard tower."

Newkirk gave a spiteful laugh. "Yeah, what we need is a three-day vacation t' Paris, that's what we need. Got plenty o' footballs there, I'll reckon, and not so many guards t' shoot at it."

"Working on that," said a familiar, deep voice which preached confidence and authority. The boys turned around quickly to face Colonel Robert E Hogan, their ranking officer and commander in chief of the Stalag 13 Underground Base.

"Colonel!" LeBeau beamed – after all, Colonel Hogan was the one who had promised him a trip back home – "Any luck?"

Hogan gave him a brief glance of annoyance, and then admitted with a crestfallen tone, "I'm working on it!"

"Trouble, sir?" asked Newkirk, not the least bit surprised that he hadn't been able to pull it off. Colonel Klink may have been stupid, but he wasn't a complete idiot. Well, some may have disputed that, but that went without saying.

"Yeah, a little," Hogan replied with a scowl, as though bewildered at his own, albeit momentary, defeat, "For some reason, Klink just wouldn't buy the story."

"Which story?" Newkirk asked innocently, "The one about us bein' bored stiff, or the one that's supposed t' get us t' Paris for three days?"

"I don't think he bought either," Hogan answered, still looking a bit dazed, "Klink must be taking those special night classes that'll expand his IQ or something."

"Uh-oh, the world's gonna end." Pulling a sunflower seed from his blue jacket pocket, Peter Newkirk gave the tiny thing an accusing glare before throwing it into the ground beside the water barrel. "Pickled sunflower seeds. I hate 'em!"

LeBeau gave the spot where the seed had landed a quick glance before quipping back, "So what now, you're going to start a flower garden?"

"Anything!" the British soldier replied, "I'm getting desperate."

"I think we all are," Hogan replied, "Okay, forget Paris for now, we've got to think of something and think of it fast. Does anybody know of any games we haven't played yet?"

"Parcheesi?" Kinch suggested with a nonchalant shrug.

LeBeau gave him a dubious look. "Anybody got a board?"

"Besides, weren't you the one who wanted to play something more energizing?" Carter reminded him, although not feeling in the least bit slighted that Kinch might have another reason for not wanting to play with him.

"Okay, then, Parcheesi's out," Hogan announced, "Anybody else?"

Carter raised his hand.

"Lemme guess," the colonel sighed, giving him a hang-dog look, "Checkers."

Carter looked shocked. "Well, it's a good game!"

"No, Carter." Hogan then asked for volunteers again. "Newkirk, how about you?"

The Englishman shrugged. "I dunno… Poker?"

"We played that last night!" LeBeau complained from the doorpost, "Besides, who lost all the chips? Huh, Pierre?"

"'Ey, that was an accident!" Newkirk defended himself, "An' besides, 'ow was I supposed t' know th' trash was gonna get taken out on Tuesdays?"

LeBeau swore in French and answered, "Because Klink made an announcement during the roll call the morning before that, remember?"

"Boys, boys," Hogan chided them patiently, "Regardless of who lost the poker chips, we can just make some until we can get out to buy some more. Who wants to play poker?

Not even Newkirk raised his hand. Hogan looked at his men as though they were staging a mutiny. "What's the matter? I thought you guys wanted something to do!"

"Well, the truth is, colonel," Carter answered timidly, "We did play it just last night. How about something else?"

"Okay," Hogan said, spreading his arms wide in surrender, "You guys have got thirty minutes to come up with something. I'm going to go mess with Schultz for a while."

Thirty minutes later, Hogan returned to check up on the boys' progress to find that they had vanished from the barracks door. Giving a quick look around the field to see if they had gone out to experiment with something, Hogan turned back and headed into the barracks.

The scene he came upon was one he hadn't expected. All four malcontents were gathered conspiratorially around the far end of the table, as though they were plotting a plan of sabotage for the Nazi capital in Berlin. Between them, it appeared that LeBeau was stitching something, and at Kinch's elbow sat a large, gallon-sized mason jar of beans. Had they decided to take up embroidery or something?

"Oh, yeah, that's neat-looking!" Carter complimented LeBeau as he stitched something more with a flourish. Kinch snickered.

"Here," he said, grabbing a spool of silver thread from the rack that stood by Newkirk's elbow, "I think he needs some hair." LeBeau grinned diabolically and accepted the gray spool, rethreading the needle with a, "_Merci, mon ami_."

Newkirk looked at the object hidden from Hogan's view with the speculative eye of an expert craftsman. "Blimey, if I didn't know better I'd say it was 'im in the flesh!"

"Then, gentlemen, it is _finis_!" announced Louis, proudly hoisting his _magnum opus_ into the air. Just then, Newkirk's hand flew up and snatched it out of his hands before Hogan could get a clear look, although so far it was obvious that the men had joined together to create some kind of bean-bag.

"What are you doing?" LeBeau demanded, looking a bit confused. Hogan heard the _slick-pop!_ of the cap being drawn off of a pen, and silence surrounded the barracks as tiny sounds of scritch-scratch could be heard on the rough canvas material they'd been sewing. Finally, Newkirk handed back the new-born toy with a gratifying smile and said, "Now it's finished."

"Oh, the monocle!" Carter said as he grabbed it away before LeBeau could present it to the world again, "I'd almost forgotten that part."

"Good thing I remembered it then," said Newkirk as Hogan drew nearer, "Woulda been hard to recognize ol' Klink without 'is monocle. Oh, 'i, Colonel, we figured ou' a new game."

Peering over Carter's shoulder at the stalag commandant's bean-brained twin, Hogan grinned. "What's that?" he asked.

"It's called Hacky Sack, sir!" Carter elaborated eagerly, "Kinch just made it up. You take a bean bag, see, and you kick it around and try to hit the different goals with it. Whichever team has the most points when everybody else gets tired wins! And, sir, the good thing is that the guard up in the tower can't shoot this ball."

"Sounds great!" Hogan praised them, "So, are you guys bored anymore?"

A chorus of "Nopes," and "Oh, no, sirs!" and "Not a bits!" rose up from the group like Hallellujah from a church choir, and Hogan could resist grabbing the Klink-Bag and leading them outside in a stampede of GI boots and military-issue jackets.

(/~^-^-^-^X^-^-^-^~\)

Coming up next – _Operation Hacky Sack 2: The Game Begins!_


	2. Chapter 2

**Operation: Hacky Sack 2 – The Game Begins!**

-

"Alright, you stand over there, Carter."

"What are the rules again?"

"Wonder what ol' Klink will do when he catches us?"

"When do we start, already?"

All five mischief-makers had gathered in a circle inside the main field of the camp, Kinch holding the bean-filled sock Lebeau and Newkirk had embroidered so painstakingly. "Okay," the black man said, tossing the ball into the air experimentally, "Everybody ready?"

"Come on, Kinch, toss the ball!" Colonel Hogan encouraged, and everybody else chimed in, "Yeah, come on, serve it, already!"

Give an amiable shrug, the communications specialist tossed the sack up into the air, pivoted neatly, and caught it with the side of his ankle. Immediately switching position, Kinch knocked it back toward him with the top of his foot, and then bounced it on his knee. Then, to include the others, he batted it toward Newkirk with the side of his arm.

The former magician smacked it with his shoulder, caught unawares despite his interest in playing. Kinch knocked it back to him patiently with his elbow, and this time Newkirk caught it with his forearm, sending it up into the sky and moving backwards a tiny bit so he could knock it on a new course. Unexpectedly, it smacked him on the forehead and Newkirk blinked for a moment, losing his concentration, barely recovering in time to kick it with the toe of his boot toward Carter.

Caught even more by surprise than Newkirk, Carter aimed a swift kick at it but missed, and the Klink Bag went PAK! - Straight back into the dust. Newkirk gave a groan of frustration, but Kinch enduringly walked over and picked up the ball.

"Sorry," Carter apologized genuinely, "I'm not so good with my feet."

Kinchloe clapped a hand on the techie's shoulder reassuringly. "It's okay, Carter," he told him, "You'll get it in time."

Carter stopped looking so crestfallen, and Kinch returned to his position at the tip of the pentagon. "Everybody ready?"

"Yup!" Hogan nodded, "Go ahead, Kinch."

"Hang on, I wanna try something."

Placing it on the ground before his feet, Kinch sandwiched the sack between his boots and paused a moment, getting his bearings before jumping into the air, twisting around, and throwing the ball up into the air with his jump.

Kinchloe landed just as Hogan got smacked in the thigh with the bag. In an attempt to take it in stride, Hogan brought up his knee, throwing the faux-Klink into his face. Lurching as the ball hit his nose, Hogan tried to catch it again with his knee, but he missed by an inch and it went hurtling down into the dust amid peals of laughter from the other men.

"Look," Kinch explained calmly, "It's like Kick-The-Can, only this thing's about a gram heavier and it shifts, and you gotta keep it up off of the ground."

"Kick-The-Can?" LeBeau asked curiously. Kinch, Hogan, Carter and Newkirk looked at him in amazement.

"They don't play that in France?" Carter asked incredulously. He'd been playing the game ever since he'd been a little kid.

Louis LeBeau shook his head, feeling that he was missing something; it was like being the only one in a room when an inside joke was told. "I've never heard of it."

"Blimey, mate, it's not that hard to get," Newkirk told his French pal, "Basically you've got this empty can, like from a garbage dump or somethin', and you try to kick it, kind o' like football –"

"Soccer," Carter corrected.

"Like _football_," Newkirk continued, giving Carter a glare that said, 'Stop correcting me, will you?', "Only it's a can, and it's every man for himself."

"You need a wide, flat space where you can spread out for Kick-The-Can," Hogan added, looking about the non-descript play-yard, "We should try it sometime."

"Heck of a price to pay just to play a good game of Kick-The-Can," Carter commented, slightly homesick.

Kinch walked over beside Hogan and squatted, picking up the bean-bag. "Alright – are we going to talk play?"

~*~

"Get it, get it, get it!"

"Whoo! Good one!"

"You mind lettin' some of us play too, Louis?"

"Hyaah!"

The shouts wafting in through the window of Klink's office was making it hard for the aging Kommandant to think clearly, much less fill out the myriads upon thousands of paperwork that he had to get done before the weekend was out. Giving a frustrated groan before setting his lips firmly together, Klink stabbed the sheet he was writing on vehemently with his fountain pen, and gave a tiny howl as ink splattered across the page.

"Why can't they be quiet?" he growled, thrusting his pen into its holder before rising from his desk angrily. Striding toward his double-doored window overlooking the field in the center of the camp, Colonel Klink threw open the panes, leaned out over the sill, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "QUIET!!!"

The balding German was rewarded with a smack in the face. At first he was shocked that anyone would dare strike the commander of a POW camp, but then realized that it hadn't been a person at all – it was a little bean bag that was now lying on his window-sill, on top of the metal thread from which hung the monocle that had gotten knocked off in the collision. Fishing the monocle back in from the indignity of swaying in the cool, European breeze, Klink fixed it again between the eyebrow and cheekbone of his left eye and took a closer look at the offender as the POWs in the yard looked on, eagerly waiting for him to toss it back.

It has obviously been a sock in its previous life, one of Schultz's in all probability. Filled generously with an amount of light-weight, dried beans, it seemed to be the perfect weight for tossing and catching – not too chunky, but not too light either. Tossing it from hand to hand, Klink studied it curiously.

Wait a minute!

Catching it and holding it firmly in his right hand, Klink glared back at the face meticulously stitched onto one half of the stained white surface. Recognizing it, a fit of anger overcame him. How _dare_ they…? Lurching over the window sill, the Kommandant looked about furiously for the man who was supposed to prevent these kinds of things from happening.

"COLONEL HOGAN!!!"


End file.
